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The late Monsieur Henri Cordier's parting gift to students of the East was his edition of the Mirabilia of the Dominican Brother Jordan of Sévérac. This was nothing less than a complete facsimile of the unique manuscript of the Mirabilia which is now in the British Museum. The facsimile is accompanied with an Introduction, a French translation and notes, and a transcript of the Latin text. The transcript is little more than a copy of that of 1839, and students will be wise to read the Latin text from the facsimile. But it is not my purpose here to review or criticize the book. Cordier, like Yule before him, thought it worth while to print in addition to the Mirabilia such other fragments of Jordan's writing as survive. Yule published versions of two letters by Jordan in Cathay and the Way Thither, 1866, and Cordier prints the Latin text of these same letters (one of them twice over) in his Notes Préliminaires and adds to them two texts of another letter which is attributed first to Bartholomew, Custos of Tauris, and secondly to Francis of Pisa. All these texts are taken at second-hand from the Biblioteca Bio-bibliografica della Terra Santa by G. Golubovich, O.S.F. These four letters, which may in fact be reduced to two and part of a third, are concerned with the martyrdom of four Franciscan Brothers at Tana near Bombay in April, 1321. This martyrdom seems to have roused extraordinary interest at the time.
page 349 note 1 Les Merveilles de l'Asie par le Père Jourdain Catalani de Sévérac par Cordier, Henri, Paris, Geuthner, 1925Google Scholar. Mirabilia Descripta, by Yule, Henry, Hakluyt Society, 1863Google Scholar. The MS. is now marked Add. 19513.
page 349 note 2 Recueil de Voyages et de Mémoires, tome iv, 1839, the text transcribed and edited by de Montbret, Baron CoquebertGoogle Scholar. The following are a few examples of the Baron's errors which reappear in the new edition: p. 110, for ex quibus read est quod; p. 111, for dietas fere V [sic] read dietas fere. 1.; for manutegnii read manutergii (both Yule and Cordier translate “on their sleeve” (“sur leurs manches”) for “instead of a towel”); for occidentales read omnes; p. 112, for ullatenus read nullatenus; for suffieiet circiter read sufficeret comuniter; p. 113, for hoa read litera, for spittaci et read psitaci id est; p. 115, for eximiæ read extra mire, for aliter read animal; p. 119, for ales——alitis read animal——animalis; p. 122, for Mari Nigro read mari nostro, etc. Nevertheless the debt we owe to M. Cordier for his book remains very great.
page 350 note 1 The references for Jordan's writings other than the Mirabilia are as follows: The “First Letter” is in these MSS., British Museum, Nero A 9, fol. 99; Paris, Bib. Nat., Latin 5006, fol. 182r°, v°; Assisi, Comunale MS. 341, fol. 134v°; and (in part) MS. 329, fol. 186r°, v°. It was printed from the Paris MS. (not quite correctly) by Quétif, Scriptores Ordinis Præicatorum, i, pp. 549, 550, and from the London and Assisi MSS. (again with small inaccuracies) by Golubovich, G., Biblioteca Bio-bibliografica della Terra Santa, ii, pp. 69, 70, 113Google Scholar; and translated by Yule, , Cathay and the Way Thither, 2nd ed., iii, pp. 75–8Google Scholar, and by Balme, F., in Année Dominicaine, 1886, pp. 24, 25Google Scholar. The “Second Letter” is included among the extracts from Jordan's letters printed below from the Chronica Generalium, where they are scattered over fol. 182r°–187r° of the Assisi MS. 329. It was first printed as a separate letter by Wadding, in Annales Minorum (2nd ed., tom, vi, pp. 359–61)Google Scholar and translated by Yule and Balme as above. The translation which accompanies the transcript below is slightly expanded from the intervening extracts and other sources in order to make the extracts from Jordan coherent. The whole text of the Cronica Generalium carefully edited by the College of Bonaventura, S. appeared in Analecta Franciscana, iii, 1897, where the Martyrdom, of which there appear to be five manuscripts, occupies pp. 597 to 613Google Scholar. The fact that this text was not used by Cordier either in 1914 or in 1925 justifies the printing of the fragments of Jordan here direct from the MS. 329. Cf. also “Cathay and the Way thither” in The New China Review, iii, 1921, pp. 216–28Google Scholar.
page 352 note 1 Or read maxime [scientie] et
page 354 note 1 Aductus changed later to adustus.
page 371 note 1 factum. But it seems possible to read the word fratrum.
page 371 note 2 Or patria. I cannot explain this.
page 373 note 1 The sentence “But now . . . all books” seems strange, and the text may possibly be corrupt. Yule translates raubam (Assisi robam, Paris Robbam) “things”, but the editors of Analecta Franciscana explain it as vestis.
page 374 note 1 All the MSS. seem to read ignoro, an obvious slip for imploro. See AF. iii, p. 610.
page 375 note 1 Read aduentum for the MS. diuinum.
page 375 note 2 As has been said above, this need not make us doubt that the extracts above are as exact copies as any mediaeval scribe cared to make of Jordan's own letters. But they reach us through the medium of Francis of Pisa. After this had gone to the printers I saw that Langlois, C. V., Histoire littéraire de la France, XXXV, pp. 270, 271Google Scholar, agrees that the extracts from Jordan may be regarded as genuine, calling them “longs extraits textuels”.